First, thanks for the aswers and coments.

Wonderful tip !! 

>Perhaps change your runtapes to "2" so no more than 2 tapes will be used 
>per amdump run.  Then the 3.8 GB will be retained on the holding disk and 
>IF you have autoflush set also, will be flushed to the begining of the 
>next virtual tape on the next amdump run.

If I do it that way, shoul I set dumpcycle to 3? runspercycle to 3? how
about tapecycle?


I don't know about the tapewait patch but I'll look into it.

Amanda is an awsome sotware. I've been tunning and learning it for the past
16 days. My first backup attempt of the servers I mentioned took 14 hours.
Through trials and erros along those days, I managed to reduce it to 4
hours, a day before yesterday. 

I rotate 15 HDs through the backup cycle so I wrote 5 script utilities:

hd_swtch: formats, tags and initializes the virtual tapes on the HD. It also
saves the daily directory under
               the previous HD tag for any eventual restores.
hd_restore: prepares the system for a restore session with the HD just
inserted, preserving the current
                 HD daily folder
hd_return: returns the system to the state it was after a restore.

hd_status: Shows every thing. Current HD, date of its insertion,how many
restores were done with it
                                           Virtual tapes and holding dis
staus (dirung a dump also)
                                           How many times amanda ran dumps
on each HD with start and finish 
                                           date/time
                                           when each HD was ever inserted
into the system

The scrpts are in portuguese but if anyone is interested, I'll translate
them and post theme here. They made my job really easier.
                                                   
Again thanks for the help

Mario Lobo
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